The Contending’s Megan McLachlan reviews Morocco’s 2024 Academy Award entry for Best International Feature, the documentary The Mother of All Lies.
Recreating scenes can be a powerful therapeutic tool. Most recently in Robert Greene’s 2021 documentary Procession, six men reenacted real-life moments from their youth to process the sexual abuse they endured as children.
Asmae El Moudir’s documentary The Mother of All Lies applies a similar technique, with Asmae and her family building miniature replicas of their Moroccan neighborhood as it looked during the Casablanca 1981 Bread Riots, when 600 people died in protest of the rising cost of bread. However, this artistic device isn’t just an instrument to confront grief but out of necessity: The State destroyed nearly all photos and videos from the riots, and Asmae’s grandmother has never allowed photographs in the house (except for the one of King Massan II). As the granddaughter, El Moudir even questions whether the one photo she finds of herself is actually her.
This artistic device isn’t just an instrument to confront grief but out of necessity: The State destroyed nearly all photos and videos from the riots.
The Mother of All Lies drops you into El Moudir’s family story in the same particular way she positions her figurines in the fictionalized mini-town she creates with her father, mother, grandmother, and friends. There’s an uncomfortable pandemic-era intimacy in El Moudir’s family being confined to one room filled with replicas of the past, as she forces her stubborn grandmother to come face to face with her own history. At times, you have to remember that this is a documentary, not a narrative film, especially during dramatic moments like when the grandmother destroys a glass drawing of herself, shattering it with her cane. Obviously, no other filmmaker could gain such access, and yet El Moudir should be commended for her ability to draw these stories out of a family desperate to keep them closed for decades.
The film acts as an interesting exercise in memory and repressed devastation. In one scene, family friend Abdallah recounts the day of the riots, when he was taken from his house and thrown into a 12-by-12 cell reeking of death and steaming with heat, the bodies of victims being dragged out like animals. There aren’t many photos or physical documentation from this day except for accounts like Abdallah’s, and as much as the film depicts the harrowing stories from survivors, it also details the importance of journalism and imagery when coping with catastrophic events. When you remove these elements, it almost gaslights victims in questioning their memory of it and whether it ever happened.
The Mother of All Lies was shortlisted as Best International Feature for last year’s Oscars, but even the most devout awards watcher should seek it out. Mixing history, family relationships, and how we remember traumatic events, the documentary highlights an auteur filmmaker as she uncovers the irretrievable, whether she’s the girl in the photo or behind it.
The Mother of All Lies opens September 6 in New York and expands to LA on September 13.
